Why Not Evacuate?

aerial

I do not understand Louisianians. Why won't they evacuate? If your lucky enough to survived one devastating hurricane , learn a lesson, leave when told to. I say stop building the levy's (another waste of money) and let Nature take it's course, it seems that the shore line is changing. It is fact, you can't fight Mother Nature.

peacefrompaul

I'm not sure they know where to go or they just don't want to leave their homes... it could possibly be all that they have.

SPEEDY MCCREADY

aerial wrote:

I do not understand Louisianians. Why won't they evacuate? If your lucky enough to survived one devastating hurricane , learn a lesson, leave when told to. I say stop building the levy's (another waste of money) and let Nature take it's course, it seems that the shore line is changing. It is fact, you can't fight Mother Nature.

Well...
Im going to speak for 30-40% of the folks who stayed....

Their government check will be in the mail in a couple days...


Yeah, I went there...

aerial

peacefrompaul wrote:

I'm not sure they know where to go or they just don't want to leave their homes... it could possibly be all that they have.

I do understand that, but to risk their life or an others life. It is sooo not worth it. When the flood comes they have nothing anyway, why not save their own life? at least they will have that..

hedonist

I woke up with this in my head -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6kdTcPrb_g

Never been in such a position to face rising waters, and fingers crossed I never will be.

I hope whatever choice they make, they're safe.

brianlux

It's a good question, Aerial. Some us would leave, I know I would. But I've moved around a number of times so it's nothing new. I wonder if some people just don't have experience with leaving what has been home for all their lives and just want to go. Kind of like deer caught in headlights. It's sad.

blackredyellow

I think it's probably different for different people...

Some think that they will luck out and will miss the worst of it... some don't want to leave their home and everything they've know for decades.... others have no place to go or really no way to get there. Others are just stupid or stubborn.

Drowned Out

aerial wrote:

I do not understand Louisianians. Why won't they evacuate? If your lucky enough to survived one devastating hurricane , learn a lesson, leave when told to. I say stop building the levy's (another waste of money) and let Nature take it's course, it seems that the shore line is changing. It is fact, you can't fight Mother Nature.

But fighting mother nature is exactly what Big Oil and shipping interests have done around NOLA. Wetlands erosion, dredging, and trenching, caused by oil and shipping interests is the main reason that Katrina was as devastating as it was. The wetlands have always acted as a buffer to hurricanes...the other main reason was that the government ignored warnings about the levee's height. It's only gotten worse since then. The Horizon disaster has killed even more wetlands vegetation, and the levees are still in disrepair. So ya, pretty much every reason that this flooding is such an issue is due to the government allowing industry to do whateverthefuck they want to the gulf ecosystems.....but too bad for the poor people in NOLA, who can't move to higher ground....stop trying to protect them, and let nature 'take it's course'....? You can't say that when we've done nothing but fuck with mother nature up to this point, and that's what put people in danger.


Economic Hit Men and the Next Drowning of New Orleans

Hurricane Bush Four Years Later, Part 2

Thursday, August 27, 2009
by Greg Palast

Who put out the hit on van Heerden?

http://www.gregpalast.com/economic-hit- ... er-part-2/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkpv6rpJ ... ure=relmfu (<----Big Easy to Big Empty - the Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans - documentary)


Ivor van Heerden is the professor at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center who warned the levees of New Orleans were ready to blow — months and years before Katrina did the job.

For being right, van Heerden was rewarded with ... getting fired. [See Katrina, Four Years Later: Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst]

But I've been in this investigating game long enough to know that van Heerden's job didn't die of natural causes or academic issues. This was a hit. Some very powerful folks wanted him disappeared and silenced — for good.

So who done it?

Here are the facts.

Dr. van Heerden has lots of friends, mostly the people of New Orleans, those who survived and cheered his fight to save their city. But he also has enemies, many of them, and they are powerful.

First, there is Big Oil. More than a decade ago, van Heerden pointed the finger at oil drilling as a culprit in threatening New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with flooding.

"Certainly he was critical of what the oil companies did to the coast," Louisiana engineer HJ Bosworth told me. "Seeing what kind of bad citizens they were. Dozens and dozens of pipeline canals just carved the living daylights out of the coast just to find some oil."

Well, we need oil, don't we?

True, but Bosworth, who advises Levees.org, a non-profit group that birddogs hurricane safety work, explained the connection between flooding New Orleans and oil drilling quantified by van Heerden's research. "Takes a million years to build (the protective coastal marsh); once you carve it up, it's just like bleeding a wild animal, hang it up, carve some holes in it, and the juice just drains out of it. Saltwater and tide invade. You make [the state] susceptible to flooding from coastal and tidal surges."


So I was amazed to learn that, shortly after van Heerden, wetlands protector, was given the heave-ho by LSU, a group calling itself "America's Wetland" gave the university a fat check for $300,000.

After a little digging, I found that it wasn't really "America's Wetland," the group with the oh-so-green name and love-Mother-Nature website, that provided the money. One-hundred percent of the loot, in fact, came from Chevron Oil Corporation. Chevron had merely "green-washed" the money through "Wetlands."

Was this Big Oil's "thank you" to LSU for canning van Heerden? The University refuses to talk to me about van Heerden's firing ("It's a confidential personnel matter").

Bosworth notes such a grant to the University "doesn't come without strings attached." And this "Wetland" grant appears to have some tangled threads. LSU will monitor the coast's environment, guided by a committee of what the school's PR office describes as "experts" in coastal infrastructure and hurricane research. But the school is pointedly excluding its own expert, van Heerden. Instead of van Heerden, LSU announced it will rely on representatives from Chevron — and Shell Oil.

You can't challenge Shell's expertise on coastal erosion. The Gulf Restoration Network has calculated that the oil giant, "has dredged 8.8 million cubic yards material while laying pipelines since 1983 causing the loss of 22,624 acres."

Shell too is a sponsor of "America's Wetland."

Bad Behavior

Van Heerden and his team of hurricane experts at LSU have other enemies, notably Big Oil's little sisters: The Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors. One internal University memo that has come to light is a complaint from the Army Corps of Engineers' Washington office to an LSU official demanding to know why van Heerden's "irresponsible behavior is tolerated."

By van Heerden's bad "behavior," they seem to be referring to the professor's computer model of the Gulf which predicted, years before Katrina hit, that the levees built by the Army Corp were too short. The Army Corps, van Heerden asserts, compounded the danger to New Orleans by going shovel-crazy, with massive dredging and channel-cutting sought by shipping interests.

Following the complaint from Washington, the University took away van Heerden's computer (no kidding). But they couldn't take away his voice. He began to speak out. University officials do not deny they told him to shut up, to stop speaking to the press about his concerns. They were worried, they told van Heerden, that his statements jeopardized their government funding.

Van Heerden's revelations were, indeed, damning. He revealed that the Bush White House knew, the night Katrina came ashore, that the levees were breaking up, but withheld this crucial information from the state's emergency response center. As a result, the state slowed evacuation and stranded residents were left to drown. [See Big Easy to Big Empty.]

A class action lawsuit has been filed against the Army Corps of Engineers on behalf of all the people of the city who lost homes and loved ones because the Corps-designed levees had failed. Anyone with a TV and two eyes could see that. But the Bush Administration flat out denied it knew its system was flawed and refused any responsibility for the disaster.

Van Heerden, who had warned Washington, long before the flood, that the levees were 18 inches too short, would have been a devastating expert witness for the public. But the university ordered him not to testify, a relief for the Corps. (A verdict is expected soon in the non-jury case.)

The Army Corps and its contractors can feel safer now that van Heerden has been booted. His Hurricane Center will be downsized and instead, the University will expand its "Wetland" program, with Chevron's checkbook.

Joining Chevron and Shell on the LSU board of "wetland" experts will be the Shaw Group, a huge Army Corps contractor.

If you've read John Perkins' book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, you would know about Shaw Group, or at least the subsidiary for whom Perkins did his dirty work: an engineering outfit that used flim-flam, intimidation and fraud to turn a buck. (I once directed a government racketeering investigation of one of their projects before Shaw bought them up. In the 1988 case, a jury found the company was co-conspirator in a multi-billion-dollar fraud, charges the company settled with a civil payment.)

Shaw Group is also a sponsor of "America's Wetland." So is electricity giant Entergy Corporation. That's the company that shut off the power in New Orleans during the flood, then sold the loose juice elsewhere, pocketing a multi-million-dollar windfall.

Yes, America's Wetland does have a green cover, Environmental Defense, exposed in the Guardian UK in 1999 for its icky habit of licking the sugar off corporate candy canes. We caught them trying to set up a lucrative financial operation with the very polluters they were supposed to be challenging. [See Fill your lungs it's only borrowed grime]

I spoke with the Chairman of America's Wetland, King Milling. Milling's just a local good ol' boy, a sincere guy, not a front for Big Oil. But he naively let his group be used to buy the debate over the environment and ice out un-bought experts like van Heerden.

Flood Warning

With LSU deep in the pocket of the corporate powers and under Army Corps pressure, van Heerden didn't stand a chance. For doing nothing more than trying to save a few thousand lives, he has paid quite a price. As he told me this week from his home, "No good turn goes unpunished."

That's van Heerden's fate. But what about the city's? Is New Orleans ready for another Katrina?

His answer is not comforting: "No, definitely not. If anything, it's worse than when Katrina hit. We've lost a lot of wetlands protection. It's not very safe ... A section of the flood wall itself has sunk about 9 inches, a result of [Hurricane] Gustav."

Is anyone listening?

"The [Army] Corps won't talk to me," says van Heerden. "Like everybody else, they are crossing their fingers and hoping we don't have a storm."

Well, don't say we didn't warn you.

aerial

Drowned Out wrote:

aerial wrote:

I do not understand Louisianians. Why won't they evacuate? If your lucky enough to survived one devastating hurricane , learn a lesson, leave when told to. I say stop building the levy's (another waste of money) and let Nature take it's course, it seems that the shore line is changing. It is fact, you can't fight Mother Nature.

But fighting mother nature is exactly what Big Oil and shipping interests have done around NOLA. Wetlands erosion, dredging, and trenching, caused by oil and shipping interests is the main reason that Katrina was as devastating as it was. The wetlands have always acted as a buffer to hurricanes...the other main reason was that the government ignored warnings about the levee's height. It's only gotten worse since then. The Horizon disaster has killed even more wetlands vegetation, and the levees are still in disrepair. So ya, pretty much every reason that this flooding is such an issue is due to the government allowing industry to do whateverthefuck they want to the gulf ecosystems.....but too bad for the poor people in NOLA, who can't move to higher ground....stop trying to protect them, and let nature 'take it's course'....? You can't say that when we've done nothing but fuck with mother nature up to this point, and that's what put people in danger.


Economic Hit Men and the Next Drowning of New Orleans

Hurricane Bush Four Years Later, Part 2

Thursday, August 27, 2009
by Greg Palast

Who put out the hit on van Heerden?

http://www.gregpalast.com/economic-hit- ... er-part-2/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bkpv6rpJ ... ure=relmfu (<----Big Easy to Big Empty - the Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans - documentary)


Ivor van Heerden is the professor at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center who warned the levees of New Orleans were ready to blow — months and years before Katrina did the job.

For being right, van Heerden was rewarded with ... getting fired. [See Katrina, Four Years Later: Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst]

But I've been in this investigating game long enough to know that van Heerden's job didn't die of natural causes or academic issues. This was a hit. Some very powerful folks wanted him disappeared and silenced — for good.

So who done it?

Here are the facts.

Dr. van Heerden has lots of friends, mostly the people of New Orleans, those who survived and cheered his fight to save their city. But he also has enemies, many of them, and they are powerful.

First, there is Big Oil. More than a decade ago, van Heerden pointed the finger at oil drilling as a culprit in threatening New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with flooding.

"Certainly he was critical of what the oil companies did to the coast," Louisiana engineer HJ Bosworth told me. "Seeing what kind of bad citizens they were. Dozens and dozens of pipeline canals just carved the living daylights out of the coast just to find some oil."

Well, we need oil, don't we?

True, but Bosworth, who advises Levees.org, a non-profit group that birddogs hurricane safety work, explained the connection between flooding New Orleans and oil drilling quantified by van Heerden's research. "Takes a million years to build (the protective coastal marsh); once you carve it up, it's just like bleeding a wild animal, hang it up, carve some holes in it, and the juice just drains out of it. Saltwater and tide invade. You make [the state] susceptible to flooding from coastal and tidal surges."


So I was amazed to learn that, shortly after van Heerden, wetlands protector, was given the heave-ho by LSU, a group calling itself "America's Wetland" gave the university a fat check for $300,000.

After a little digging, I found that it wasn't really "America's Wetland," the group with the oh-so-green name and love-Mother-Nature website, that provided the money. One-hundred percent of the loot, in fact, came from Chevron Oil Corporation. Chevron had merely "green-washed" the money through "Wetlands."

Was this Big Oil's "thank you" to LSU for canning van Heerden? The University refuses to talk to me about van Heerden's firing ("It's a confidential personnel matter").

Bosworth notes such a grant to the University "doesn't come without strings attached." And this "Wetland" grant appears to have some tangled threads. LSU will monitor the coast's environment, guided by a committee of what the school's PR office describes as "experts" in coastal infrastructure and hurricane research. But the school is pointedly excluding its own expert, van Heerden. Instead of van Heerden, LSU announced it will rely on representatives from Chevron — and Shell Oil.

You can't challenge Shell's expertise on coastal erosion. The Gulf Restoration Network has calculated that the oil giant, "has dredged 8.8 million cubic yards material while laying pipelines since 1983 causing the loss of 22,624 acres."

Shell too is a sponsor of "America's Wetland."

Bad Behavior

Van Heerden and his team of hurricane experts at LSU have other enemies, notably Big Oil's little sisters: The Army Corps of Engineers and its contractors. One internal University memo that has come to light is a complaint from the Army Corps of Engineers' Washington office to an LSU official demanding to know why van Heerden's "irresponsible behavior is tolerated."

By van Heerden's bad "behavior," they seem to be referring to the professor's computer model of the Gulf which predicted, years before Katrina hit, that the levees built by the Army Corp were too short. The Army Corps, van Heerden asserts, compounded the danger to New Orleans by going shovel-crazy, with massive dredging and channel-cutting sought by shipping interests.

Following the complaint from Washington, the University took away van Heerden's computer (no kidding). But they couldn't take away his voice. He began to speak out. University officials do not deny they told him to shut up, to stop speaking to the press about his concerns. They were worried, they told van Heerden, that his statements jeopardized their government funding.

Van Heerden's revelations were, indeed, damning. He revealed that the Bush White House knew, the night Katrina came ashore, that the levees were breaking up, but withheld this crucial information from the state's emergency response center. As a result, the state slowed evacuation and stranded residents were left to drown. [See Big Easy to Big Empty.]

A class action lawsuit has been filed against the Army Corps of Engineers on behalf of all the people of the city who lost homes and loved ones because the Corps-designed levees had failed. Anyone with a TV and two eyes could see that. But the Bush Administration flat out denied it knew its system was flawed and refused any responsibility for the disaster.

Van Heerden, who had warned Washington, long before the flood, that the levees were 18 inches too short, would have been a devastating expert witness for the public. But the university ordered him not to testify, a relief for the Corps. (A verdict is expected soon in the non-jury case.)

The Army Corps and its contractors can feel safer now that van Heerden has been booted. His Hurricane Center will be downsized and instead, the University will expand its "Wetland" program, with Chevron's checkbook.

Joining Chevron and Shell on the LSU board of "wetland" experts will be the Shaw Group, a huge Army Corps contractor.

If you've read John Perkins' book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, you would know about Shaw Group, or at least the subsidiary for whom Perkins did his dirty work: an engineering outfit that used flim-flam, intimidation and fraud to turn a buck. (I once directed a government racketeering investigation of one of their projects before Shaw bought them up. In the 1988 case, a jury found the company was co-conspirator in a multi-billion-dollar fraud, charges the company settled with a civil payment.)

Shaw Group is also a sponsor of "America's Wetland." So is electricity giant Entergy Corporation. That's the company that shut off the power in New Orleans during the flood, then sold the loose juice elsewhere, pocketing a multi-million-dollar windfall.

Yes, America's Wetland does have a green cover, Environmental Defense, exposed in the Guardian UK in 1999 for its icky habit of licking the sugar off corporate candy canes. We caught them trying to set up a lucrative financial operation with the very polluters they were supposed to be challenging. [See Fill your lungs it's only borrowed grime]

I spoke with the Chairman of America's Wetland, King Milling. Milling's just a local good ol' boy, a sincere guy, not a front for Big Oil. But he naively let his group be used to buy the debate over the environment and ice out un-bought experts like van Heerden.

Flood Warning

With LSU deep in the pocket of the corporate powers and under Army Corps pressure, van Heerden didn't stand a chance. For doing nothing more than trying to save a few thousand lives, he has paid quite a price. As he told me this week from his home, "No good turn goes unpunished."

That's van Heerden's fate. But what about the city's? Is New Orleans ready for another Katrina?

His answer is not comforting: "No, definitely not. If anything, it's worse than when Katrina hit. We've lost a lot of wetlands protection. It's not very safe ... A section of the flood wall itself has sunk about 9 inches, a result of [Hurricane] Gustav."

Is anyone listening?

"The [Army] Corps won't talk to me," says van Heerden. "Like everybody else, they are crossing their fingers and hoping we don't have a storm."

Well, don't say we didn't warn you.

My Friend, This is a long read so I skimmed through it and will read it a little later when I have more time. I believe every word I did read. I am so sick of politicians dishonesty. I wish there was something we could do. Now that they have destroyed the coast and we know they did and we know what will happen is another reason people should leave when they are told to evacuate. We see the levies will not work. It's time to move to another area....could it be possible to have the oil company's pay for the move? I don't have the answers but I wish they would try and save there life.....

Go Beavers

aerial wrote:

I do not understand Louisianians. Why won't they evacuate? If your lucky enough to survived one devastating hurricane , learn a lesson, leave when told to. I say stop building the levy's (another waste of money) and let Nature take it's course, it seems that the shore line is changing. It is fact, you can't fight Mother Nature.

Are you really following Isaac's impact? My understanding is that New Orleans within the upgraded federal levee system is holding up okay, it's the areas outside of the levee system that are flooding. Or, maybe I don't have all the info and you can explain how it's been a waste of money.

aerial

Go Beavers wrote:

aerial wrote:

I do not understand Louisianians. Why won't they evacuate? If your lucky enough to survived one devastating hurricane , learn a lesson, leave when told to. I say stop building the levy's (another waste of money) and let Nature take it's course, it seems that the shore line is changing. It is fact, you can't fight Mother Nature.

Are you really following Isaac's impact? My understanding is that New Orleans within the upgraded federal levee system is holding up okay, it's the areas outside of the levee system that are flooding. Or, maybe I don't have all the info and you can explain how it's been a waste of money.

From what I heard the water was coming over a levee.....and they will have to remove part of a levee ( not sure if it is the same one) to let the water out so to relieve some flooding......I say just move away from the flood zones.....one guy on TV lost everything AGAIN, he has now decided to leave....

gimmesometruth27

aerial wrote:

From what I heard the water was coming over a levee.....and they will have to remove part of a levee ( not sure if it is the same one) to let the water out so to relieve some flooding......I say just move away from the flood zones.....one guy on TV lost everything AGAIN, he has now decided to leave....

is it really that easy to just pack up and leave these days? people are in homes that they can't sell and some can't give them away, and you expect them to just up and move? yeah. that's really easy...

josevolution

Yeah it's funny how people come here and just state it like it's the easyest thing to " hey just pack up and leave no biggie " ..Have any of you ever been told to evacuate your homes and leave all that you have behind ...and i'm not asking this of the people here that do have a clue .....

hedonist

josevolution wrote:

Yeah it's funny how people come here and just state it like it's the easyest thing to " hey just pack up and leave no biggie " ..Have any of you ever been told to evacuate your homes and leave all that you have behind ...and i'm not asking this of the people here that do have a clue .....

Grab my purse, my man, and our cats :P

To be fair though, if you live in an area with well-known dangers, I think it's incumbent upon you to have some sort of disaster plan in place...at least try to.

I'd rather lose all our replacable shit than those I value most (myself included!).

(and I get it's easy - perhaps hypocritical - for me to say this from here; we could definitely be better-prepared when Southern California is quaked and washed away)

peacefrompaul

hedonist wrote:

josevolution wrote:

Yeah it's funny how people come here and just state it like it's the easyest thing to " hey just pack up and leave no biggie " ..Have any of you ever been told to evacuate your homes and leave all that you have behind ...and i'm not asking this of the people here that do have a clue .....

Grab my purse, my man, and our cats :P

To be fair though, if you live in an area with well-known dangers, I think it's incumbent upon you to have some sort of disaster plan in place...at least try to.

I'd rather lose all our replacable shit than those I value most (myself included!).

(and I get it's easy - perhaps hypocritical - for me to say this from here; we could definitely be better-prepared when Southern California is quaked and washed away)

Learn to swim

josevolution

hedonist wrote:

josevolution wrote:

Yeah it's funny how people come here and just state it like it's the easyest thing to " hey just pack up and leave no biggie " ..Have any of you ever been told to evacuate your homes and leave all that you have behind ...and i'm not asking this of the people here that do have a clue .....

Grab my purse, my man, and our cats :P

To be fair though, if you live in an area with well-known dangers, I think it's incumbent upon you to have some sort of disaster plan in place...at least try to.

I'd rather lose all our replacable shit than those I value most (myself included!).

(and I get it's easy - perhaps hypocritical - for me to say this from here; we could definitely be better-prepared when Southern California is quaked and washed away)

No i hear you and i agree ....but i'm sure that decision has to be one of the hardest that i hope i never ever have to make ....

hedonist

peacefrompaul wrote:

Learn to swim

See ya down in Arizona Bay :wave:

Indifference

LOOTERS!!!

aerial

josevolution wrote:

Yeah it's funny how people come here and just state it like it's the easyest thing to " hey just pack up and leave no biggie " ..Have any of you ever been told to evacuate your homes and leave all that you have behind ...and i'm not asking this of the people here that do have a clue .....

Yes I have. I live in Florida. I have my pictures and important papers ready to go at all times. I am not saying it is easy to move or evacuate. We all know life is not always easy, but moving is better than dying or causing someone else to die while trying to rescue you. People should not be so hung up on material things. I'm just saying if my home was flooded up to the roof once I would eat it and get the hell out of there. Lesson learned!

Who Princess

Well, having many family members on the Texas Gulf coast I have some thoughts about this but it's going to have to wait until I get off work.

brianlux

josevolution wrote:

Yeah it's funny how people come here and just state it like it's the easyest thing to " hey just pack up and leave no biggie " ..Have any of you ever been told to evacuate your homes and leave all that you have behind ...and i'm not asking this of the people here that do have a clue .....

Yes, josevolution, the thought is daunting, to say the least. We should have nothing but compassion for those faced with such a decision.

josevolution

aerial wrote:

josevolution wrote:

Yeah it's funny how people come here and just state it like it's the easyest thing to " hey just pack up and leave no biggie " ..Have any of you ever been told to evacuate your homes and leave all that you have behind ...and i'm not asking this of the people here that do have a clue .....

Yes I have. I live in Florida. I have my pictures and important papers ready to go at all times. I am not saying it is easy to move or evacuate. We all know life is not always easy, but moving is better than dying or causing someone else to die while trying to rescue you. People should not be so hung up on material things. I'm just saying if my home was flooded up to the roof once I would eat it and get the hell out of there. Lesson learned!

Ok that is the way to do it you plan for it and i would think if i lived in an area where there was potential for natural events i would have a game plan ready , i hope i never have too !

JOEJOEJOE

If only PJ had a song that could be used as a public service announcement!